A Syrian Intervention Need Not Be Military Focused

The United States has already intervened in Syria over the past year, and it should continue to do so with a focus on diplomacy aimed at getting other countries to pull their weight and exert their influence to stop the violence in Syria.

The last thing the United States needs to do is get directly involved in another Middle East war—we need only think back to the strategic disaster that the 2003-2011 Iraq war was for the United States. Or we can recall the Reagan administration’s decision to send U.S. forces to Lebanon in 1982—an engagement which ended shortly after the 1983 bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks, resulting in the highest death toll in a single day for the U.S. military since the end of the Vietnam War. The United States needs to use its unrivaled military might judiciously.